Mediating role of engagement and commitment to bridge empowering leadership and task performance

<jats:sec><jats:title content-type="abstract-subheading">Purpose</jats:title><jats:p>This research seeks to reveal the mediating role of work engagement and affective commitment as individual aspects that have the potential to bridge the effect of empowering leadership on the task performance of Correctional Service counselors in Indonesia, especially due to the limited literature on these two aspects in the context of public organizations.</jats:p></jats:sec><jats:sec><jats:title content-type="abstract-subheading">Design/methodology/approach</jats:title><jats:p>Quantitative research was conducted on 350 counselors throughout Indonesia. The data was collected by distributing questionnaires online. The collected data were then analyzed using Structural Equation Modeling to test the seven research hypotheses.</jats:p></jats:sec><jats:sec><jats:title content-type="abstract-subheading">Findings</jats:title><jats:p>Empowering leadership significantly strengthens task performance, work engagement and affective commitment. For indirect effects, this study found that affective commitment partially mediates the effect of empowering leadership on task performance. Meanwhile, work engagement failed to act as a mediator because it did not significantly impact strengthening task performance.</jats:p></jats:sec><jats:sec><jats:title content-type="abstract-subheading">Originality/value</jats:title><jats:p>Notably, the unexpected result of work engagement's inability to significantly boost task performance deviates from the prevailing trends observed in previous empirical research, thereby adding a novel dimension to the findings of this study.</jats:p></jats:sec>